by Brook Wilder
“Oh my God,” Cindy whispered as she seemed to realize what was going on. “They got bomb vests.”
Strapped to each one of the women that Chance loved most in his life was a ring of explosives. He felt his stomach completely drop out and his world implode. He’d been played. He’d been played better than he ever thought it possible and if his entire life and world wasn’t on the line he would have congratulated Ben for his abilities to pull one over on them all. He’d truly outdone himself with just how crazy and sick someone could be, especially if he knew that Hannah was pregnant.
Jesus Christ. He had to think of something and he had to think of it fast.
Chapter 36
“Well, well, well,” said a chilling voice that would probably one day haunt Hannah for the rest of her days. “Everything just falls right into place. It’s sad how predictable everyone always is.”
From behind her she heard rustling as Ben stepped out from his hiding spot. He stepped between her and Kat and moved to stand in front of them, hands on his hips and looking right at Chance.
“This is why I would have done better in your position, Mr. President,” Ben said. “You’re not creative enough.”
“You’re a sick bastard,” Chance said.
“That’s because you don’t understand genius with that walnut brain of yours,” Ben said. “You were always blinded by some weird sense of righteousness. Newsflash: you’re not Superman and the gang isn’t your own personal Justice League. We exist to cause chaos, not to try and operate within the confines of society. You missed the entire point of organized crime, man.”
“I was trying to create an organization, a career for people,” Chance said. “I didn’t want to see every single one of my friends end up in jail.”
“You make the right friends and nobody stays in jail for long.”
“And what do you know about any of it?”
That wasn’t like Chance. He was letting his mouth fly off and while he had done it with her in the past during their arguments, he wasn’t the type to do it in a business transaction. Something was up and Ben was too cocky and impressed with himself to notice. He started rattling off exactly what he did know about it and Chance seemed to have a question for everything he said.
She turned her head, just slightly, just enough to make eye contact with Scout who seemed to have noticed the Hannahe thing. But she gave an answer in the form of a jerk of her head to the leaves beyond the group. Hannah turned her gaze and saw something rustling out there. She prayed it was back up for their side and not for Ben. Chance was keeping him talking, but she wasn’t sure if it served a purpose or if it was just stalling.
“You’re a shit leader, you know that?” Ben said. “And you were a shit son to your old man. He complained about you a lot.”
“I’m sure he did since he was the scum of the Earth and couldn’t handle that I was actually worth more than him,” Chance said.
“Well don’t you think highly of yourself?”
“I could say the Hannahe thing to you.”
They went back and forth like this, Chance knowing exactly what buttons to push to get Ben to talk and Ben seemed to be scrambling for the words to say to make Chance lose his cool. But he never seemed to find them as they went on.
“You know, maybe just to prove my point, I blow up your girl first, huh?” Ben said. “A nice end to whatever little future you two thought you were going to have.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Now that’s dangerous, calling a man on a bluff sure seems like a good way to get him to come through on his promise, don’t you think?”
Hannah was terrified for only a second because Ben’s hand never even got close to the trigger. He was down on the ground before that, a small red dot leaking out even more read was in the center of his forehead. Everything else seemed to happen in slow motion as men came forward, rushing to the men and worked at dismantling the vests on them. After that other, warmer, more familiar bodies filled their personal space and Hannah could smell the familiar scent that belonged to no one but Chance.
She fell into him and he caught her like a safety net, like the only arms that ever mattered, like home.
Epilogue
Things never seemed to quite go the way that Hannah had planned, in any aspect of her life. She planned out her graduation since she was a teenager and it had become even more concrete as her days as a student came to an end and that graduation ceremony loomed closer and closer. She was heavily pregnant but Chance said it made the gown look even more beautiful on her. She didn’t agree but kissed him on the cheek for his sweetness anyway as they parted: she to the line of student and him to join the rest of their friends and family in the audience.
“And now for the graduates of Busch School of Law…”
It was alphabetical and there was a surprising amount of people in front of her in the alphabet for a B last name. It gave her just enough time to panic and think that it all might be trick, that she might be in some massive hallucination and she’d wake up back in class almost a year ago never having met Chance or Kat or any of the people now waiting to scream and clap for her in the audience.
“Hannahantha Bremer.”
But then it was real because her legs were taking her up and onto the stage and she could hear those familiar voices of her family calling and cheering for her, standing up and causing a ruckus. She felt herself turn red as she got on the stage, all eyes on her, and the Dean seemed to have a twinkle in her eye as she cast a glance at Hannah’s family and then back at her. Hannah shrugged and the Dean winked and everything seemed perfect.
But then it wasn’t quite perfect.
In Hannah’s ideal world, this moment would have been followed up with her walking off stage to join her fellow graduates, waiting to flip her tassel and throw her hat in the air. She also would have followed this with running into the waiting arms of her friends and family who were ready with bone crushing hugs and shots of congratulations.
What she got instead was the rather mortifying moment of her water breaking as soon as the diploma touched her hand. She was pretty sure she was never going to live that one down. She’d forever be known as the woman who practically gave birth at her graduation.
Luckily, Kat was prepared. She called the hospital, she got her there. Chance was a useless mess running around like a chicken with no head, trying to find a way to be useful. It was adorable, but at the moment it made Hannah want to punch him as the contractions started coming in and she felt like she was going to just burst from the inside out.
“Babe, you’re crushing my hand,” he said and she shot him a glare. “Which is perfectly okay.”
She squeezed and squeezed as her muscles worked against her and the doctor called out some numbers to a nurse. It was also Kat who dragged a minister into the room to perform a ceremony for Chance and a very much in pain Hannah before they wheeled her off into the delivery room.
“We already booked the venue though,” Hannah groaned.
“We can have that be our show wedding,” Chance said, kissing her forehead.
They said I do. They took vows. They kissed to seal it. And not a minute too soon as she was fully dilated and the baby wasn’t going to wait any longer for its parents to be ready.
She’d become a lawyer, a parent, and married. All in one day. As painful and stressful and embarrassing as the past year had been. She wouldn’t trade it for the world.
THE END
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BARED
Prologue
She had to catch her breath as she stepped out of the small car into the balmy Colorado spring air. She stared, her warm dark eyes wide on the large, rough looking building that seemed to jut out unnaturally from the mountain range that ran on like jagged, snow-capped teeth behind it. It looked rough, and it was rough. She knew that from experience.
Outside, it looked like a nearly abandoned warehouse or old industrial factory, with
weathered and grey raw wood boards as siding and most of the windows barred. She forced herself to take another step forward, easing out from behind the shield of the driver’s side door and closing it firmly behind her. Each step closer to the front door was a battle and as she neared the sound of the loud rumbling of raised voices coming from inside reached her, and she nearly turned around and bolted back for her the safety of her car then and there.
She was Elle Watson, and Elle Watson didn’t belong in a place like this. Elle Watson didn’t frequent biker bars, or low brow establishments and she certainly didn’t go to parties at a notorious biker gang’s clubhouse. And yet, there she was, her trembling fingers grasping the rusty metal bar that served as a doorknob on one of the heavy double doors that barred the entrance.
Elle took another deep breath, trying in vain to calm her racing nerves. She’d never been comfortable in social situations, and it didn’t help that she knew she was walking into a pit of Vipers. Literally. She knew one of the bikers whose name really was Viper. Or at least, that’s the nickname that he went by. And then there were the others. Tucker, and Hot Wheels. Sparkplug and Joel. And of course, Honey.
Ridiculous name, she scoffed to herself. You’re stalling, another voice whispered back, the small voice deep inside herself that she kept locked away most of the time. Of course I’m stalling, she hissed back, I don’t belong here.
You could. Those words whispered through her and she let them for the briefest moment before shoving them, and that little voice, back into the corner of her mind. Without waiting to give herself time to have any more second doubts, she yanked the heavy door open and strode in. And immediately froze.
The inside of the clubhouse looked just as rough and weather worn as the outside but instead of wind and snow and icy temperatures, the wear was from booted feet and broken glass and copious amounts of spilled beer that let the uneven wood boards of the floor slightly sticky as she took another tentative step forward. The place was also packed.
She knew it would be. Carla had told her that the celebration of a raising a new president was a wild one, drawing every member of a biker gang out and could last for days on end. It seemed like the Dirty Cruisers weren’t any different.
At the thought of Carla, her best friend and next door neighbor, Elle scanned the loud, hard partying crowd for her familiar dark brown hair and bright blue eyes. The same eyes that had given her the nickname Bluebird when she had first started dating Joel Lasseter, the man of the hour and newly raised president of the Dirty Cruisers himself.
Elle shuddered slightly at the thought, unconsciously. At first, she had disapproved of Carla getting involved with a biker, and a criminal at that. They had first met the year before. Carla had been working at Honey Bud Farms, a marijuana farm just outside of Denver, and had been driving a shipment of the stuff to a dispensary when her truck had been run off the road, and the shipment stolen by none other than Joel and the Dirty Cruisers.
But after everything that had happened with Maurice, Carla’s old boss and owner of the farm, Elle had come to trust him. Marginally. He had saved her best friend from a murdering scumbag, after all.
You’re stalling again, that damn voice was back, egging her on, taunting her and it didn’t help that it was right. Elle stared helplessly around the large crowded room, feeling her heartbeat spike in her chest as anxiety sunk deep. She hated crowds. She hated loud places. Ever since she was a kid, she’d felt a crushing sense of nervousness whenever she was forced to be in one, like now. She never would have come if Carla hadn’t made her promise that she would, and Elle Watson never broke a promise.
As if the thought had conjured her, Elle suddenly saw Carla’s beaming face break through the rowdy crowd and rush towards her. A moment later Carla was giving her a big, squeezing hug.
“I’m so glad you made it!” Carla said, breathless and red cheeked from fighting through the throng of leather clad bikers, “I was worried you weren’t going to come.”
“I wouldn’t want to miss my best friend’s further descent into a life of crime,” Elle said, with a mock serious look, “Besides, I promised.”
Carla rolled her eyes at Elle’s words, focusing her bright blue gaze on her own dark brown. “I’ll have you know that from here on out, I’m going straight.” She leaned forward, whispering conspiratorially, “and so is Joel.”
Elle’s brows raised in surprise, “Really?”
“Yeah, you know I’ve bought out that bastard Maurice and took over the farm?” Carla barely waited for Elle’s nod to continue, “Well, now that I am the new official owner of Honey Bud farms, I offered Joel and the Dirty Cruisers a position as a…silent partner, we’ll say.”
“What does that mean?” Elle asked. She remembered how Joel fronted most of the funds for Carla to buy the farm. She hadn’t seen much of the records and files, but enough to know that the farm turned a tidy profit, and Joel had realized it.
“Well, it’s much more profitable and much less dangerous to sell marijuana legally. He just…” Carla paused, looking around and lowering her voice once more, “Joel’s worried about how the rest of the club will take it. They’re used to a certain lifestyle and going straight isn’t really part of any of their plans. He hopes that once the money starts coming in from this year’s crops it will be enough to quiet any complaints.”
“Does he expect trouble?” Elle asked worriedly, and Carla just shrugged, grinning once more.
“Joel’s the president now. His word is law. No one would go against him.”
“If you say so,” Elle said slowly, then looked up at her friend once more, “Are you sure about this Carla? This whole business is what got you into trouble last year. It almost got you killed.”
“I know,” her friend said thoughtfully, pausing for a moment as she looked back over her shoulder at the handsome dark haired, gray eyed man who was laughing and joking in the middle of a circle of his fellow crew, “but it also brought me Joel.” When Carla looked back, Elle could see the raw emotion and love shining from her blue eyes and for a brief moment felt a stab of jealousy before she pushed it viciously away.
“I’m happy for you, Carla. I really am,” Elle said, forcing herself to mean the words, “I just…I worry about you.”
“You worry about everything,” Carla snorted giving her another quick hug, “Now go. Have fun. Enjoy the party.”
“Not likely,” Elle whispered under her breath but it was too late for her friend to hear. Carla was already gone, lost amongst the crowd to reappear a moment later next to Joel’s side. Elle watched them for a moment, as Joel turned, smiling down at Carla with pure tenderness in his silvery gray eyes as he pulled her close. She cleared her throat, looking away, feeling…uncomfortable. That’s it. That’s it all it was. Just uncomfortable. Certainly, it wasn’t jealousy once more raising its ugly head.
With a sigh, she turned in a random direction, hoping to find a quiet corner where she could hide until enough time had passed that she would go, and quiet place that would ease the tightness in her chest. The tightness that only grew as she had to push her way through the rough, heavily drinking bikers.
She nearly cursed out loud when she finally shoved her way into an opening, only to find herself standing in front of the old, worn wooden bar and the last person in the entire world that she wanted to see.
Honey. What the hell kind of nickname was that anyways, especially for someone as tall, and muscular and covered in tattoos as the Dirty Cruiser’s resident bartender was. And handsome. Don’t forget handsome.
Elle shook off the thought, trying to ignore it but that didn’t make it any less true. With his wavy, glossy auburn hair and melting, chocolate brown eyes he had a way of charming everybody. Well, everybody but her. She could see straight through his shameless flirting, and she certainly wasn’t going to fall for his tricks.
It’s a little late for that, isn’t it? She really did growl under her breath, once more ignoring that small, sly voice, and resol
utely turned around, hoping to escape without being noticed but it really was too late for that.
“Elle!” His voice, low and rumbling and intimate sounding even in the middle of the crowded party, “Elle, wait!”
She took a deep breath, her name on his lips sounding like, well…honey to her ears. And that just annoyed her even more. With a long suffering sigh, she steeled herself, then turned around. Elle Watson was a lot of things, but cowardly wasn’t one of them. And she wasn’t about to let him think he had the power to chase her away.
Elle was prepared for him, for the unnerving effect he had on her, but even still his warm, dark eyed gaze swept over her with the force of a speeding train leaving a burning tingling in its wake. She had to take two more deep breaths before she could get her legs moving again, but after a long moment she was once more standing in front of the scratched and scarred bar. She ran her hand over the uneven surface, her fingers finding each crack, each gauge in the dark wood.